Hangover - the movie
Yesterday after work, I headed over to the campus bar with a couple of friends and since the pitchers were only eight dollars (I know!!!), we got pretty drunk. And in our inebriated stupor, we got started talking about why alcohol causes hangovers that just make you want to kill yourself. Don’t laugh! We are all biologists, which, by definition, means that we are going to talk about dorky things (girls were mentioned once-in-a-while but mostly overlooked!)… Now, you can laugh. Anyways, I figured that the topic makes a perfect sequel to the last post so I will try to be logical and sensible, although I am hungover.
Simply put, alcohol disrupts cell membrane integrity. Cell membranes are made of phospholipids that basically make an oil-like layer that separates the inside of a cell from the outside. Alcohols are strange because they dissolve well in water, as you know from making mix drinks, and they also dissolve fats because they have one or more methyl groups that can interact with the lipids of phospholipids. Because of this latter property alcohols not only enter cells with ease, they also affect normal functioning of various proteins that are embedded in the cell membrane. These proteins regulate much of the cellular activity like what gets in, what gets out, and else.
Above is the reason why you get drunk more easily on an empty stomach. Alcohol passes the stomach cells much more easily without any food there to dilute it and therefore enters the bloodstream much more efficiently. Once in the bloodstream, it easily crosses the blood-brain barrier (BBB), which usually is a really strong barrier that very selectively allows things to enter the cerebrospinal fluid from the blood circulation and vice-versa. BBB, however, is made of lipids and since alcohol dissolves fats, it easily traverses this barrier and exerts its intoxicating effects, which give you the oh-so-drunk feeling.
In addition to being fat-soluble, alcohol is also a diuretic, which means that it makes you urinate, which should come as no surprise. Excessive amounts of water loss can greatly alter body’s electrolyte balance causing thirst, weakness, dizziness, and lightheadednes, which are usually common symptoms of hangover.
Alcohol is a toxin and when ingested, liver gets consumed with trying to detoxify the blood of alcohol. This affects liver’s ability to make glucose and after a night of binge drinking you can become severly hypoglycemic, leading to an excruciantly painful headache because brain survives solely on glucose made by the liver since the brain can not make its own.
Well, those were some of the reasons I could think of for getting hungover. There are a few ways to ease a hangover like by restoring water and ionic balance (drink gatorade or another such drink), by replenishing glucose and protein levels (eat an egg and something high in fructose levels), and for some odd reason, by drinking coffee. I have no idea why coffee helps, and to tell you the truth I don’t think anybody really knows, but I can tell you from experience that it does. Ahh! just another reason to love coffee. Cheers, my friends. And don’t forget to drop me a comment if you find something that I forgot.
